Brief Overview of Collection, MC33

Name Tom M. Boulware Collection

Dates 1926-1991

Extent .25 cubic foot

Historical Note Thomas M. “Tom” Boulware was born in Missouri in 1903 and received an M.D. degree from the Washington University medical school in St. Louis. In 1929 he left the faculty of the Vanderbilt medical school and moved to Birmingham to begin medical practice at the Norwood Clinic. In 1934 Boulware helped establish the first approved OB/GYN residency program in the state of Alabama. The program was based in the city’s Hillman Hospital. In 1935 Dr. Boulware helped establish the city’s first indigent maternity clinic, again in Hillman Hospital. During the 1930s and 1940s, Boulware also served on the staffs of Children’s Home Hospital, the Holy Family Hospital, and the Slossfield Community Clinic, all of which chiefly treated the city’s poor African-American populations. After the University of Alabama medical school was moved to Birmingham in 1945, Dr. Boulware became one of the first three faculty members in the Department of Obstetrics. Boulware held a clinical appointment at the Medical Center until the 1960s. Although he stopped delivering babies in 1977, after an estimated 20,000 career deliveries, Dr. Boulware remained active in the health-care community in Birmingham. He served as an obstetric consultant for the Jefferson County Health Department until the mid 1980s when, after a sixty-year career, Tom Boulware finally retired. The date of his death is unknown.

Provenance This collection consists of materials of or by Tom M. Boulware, M.D., which were originally collected at the Jefferson County Medical Society/ UAB Health Sciences Archives. UAB Archives staff arranged this small collection by bringing together various Boulware materials into one artificial collection.